Falling Slowly
by Setep Ka Tawy
Summary: He drops his face into his hands, feeling the memories twining themselves irrevocably around him. The reminders will never leave. Sherlock and John's separate musings during the the end of "The Reichenbach Fall". Songfic. Vague spoilers.


Just an abstract sort of songfic - almost a character study of Sherlock and John during the last part of "The Reichenbach Fall".

Lyrics are from the song "Falling Slowly", by Glen Hansard.

Warning for some vague spoilers! Enjoy!

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**Falling Slowly**

_I don't know you__  
__But I want you__  
__All the more for that_

He sits, slumped, in the familiar armchair, one hand straining upward to support his forehead. His eyes are stationary, blank, unseeing, and yet he sees everything. Every detail of the room is sharp and clear, a three hundred and sixty degree glass case that will shatter if he looks at it. Because if he looks at it, he knows he will see what isn't there.

John sees, but he cannot look.

But oh, how he longs to look. Longs to look and find that the glass is only distorting reality, not mirroring it. Longs to look beyond the glass, and see what is no longer there - what he had and understood, and what he no longer has and now cannot understand.

_Words fall through me__  
__And always fool me__  
__And I can't react_

A rush of vivid sound and washed-out colour comes over him like a rainstorm, and he can do nothing but hunch his shoulders and raise his head against the torrent. Voices resound like whispers of thunder.

Just do as I ask. _Please._ Keep your eyes fixed on me._ Please._ Will you do this for me?

Fists, eyes, breaths clench, and so does John's heart. The pleading rends his soul, and he is helpless.

_And games that never amount__  
__To more than they're meant__  
__Will play themselves out_

The final act, the last round, the ending move – meaningless phrases now that the moment is here. Is there meaning in any of it? Once the fuel has been consumed, the fire no longer burns, but withers into ash. Tatters, remnants, colourless and forgotten they will fall.

Sherlock wonders, not for the first time, what it has all been for.

_Take this sinking boat and point it home__  
__We've still got time__  
__Raise your hopeful voice _

_You have a choice_

_You'll make it now_

He stands upon the summit, the anti-climax of an upward spiral leading nowhere, half a step from the fairytale's final chapter. He is balanced on the outermost strand of the spider's web, knowing that the thread beneath his foot will only break if he is the one to cut it. Above him, there is nothing; below him is a free-fall into darkness.

It is Sherlock's choice to make. The wind pulls at him, encouraging him, forbidding him, tempting him. Raw, vulnerable, exposed, he falters. The words will barely come.

_Falling slowly, eyes that know me__  
__And I can't go back__  
__Wounds that take me and erase me__  
__And I'm painted black_

The lies are bitter on his tongue, not because he must swallow them, but because he must spit them back out. The language of friendship is broken, each word a scar. Water burns in two pairs of interlocking eyes, denial and acceptance circling in empty space. Sherlock knows there is no turning back.

The world trembles, the city shakes, the thread unravels.

Flight is only an illusion.

_You have suffered enough__  
__And warred with yourself__  
__It's time that you won_

He looks down at it, this feeble monument to tragedy, and to triumph. But he does not see it. A stone is such a deeply inadequate marker of remembrance. It's not enough, it will never be enough. Not for him.

The best man. The most human human being.

John's mind goes back to what led them to this, and he wonders, not for the last time, what it all was for.

_Take this sinking boat and point it home__  
We've still got time  
Raise your hopeful voice_

_You have a choice_

_You've made it now_

He hopes that this is not the end.

He knows that the end has already come.

_Falling slowly _

_Sing your melody_

_I'll sing it loud_

He drops his face into his hands, feeling the memories twining themselves irrevocably around him. The reminders will never leave.

That's what people do, don't they? Leave a note.

The note is left everywhere. John knows what it says. He knew what it said before it existed. But he reads it anyway. He sees it, he looks at it, and through the glass, it shows what might still be there.

Believe in Sherlock.

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Reviews are very much appreciated! May the Force be with you.


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